Police Shut Down Eight-mile Stretch of Highway in MA

Published at 6:30 PM EDT on Mar 21, 2014

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(NECN: Alysha Palumbo - Deerfield & Chester, MA) - Interstate
91 was a ghost town Sunday night as police were forced to shut down more than
an eight mile stretch of the highway from Greenfield to Deerfield due to fears
of flooding.

This is what threatened to cross from neighborhoods onto the
roadway, caused by a partial failure of two dams in the town of Rowe that
flooded the Deerfield River.

"The worst part about it was probably how fast it came in, usually if the
Deerfield backs up from the Connecticut when the Connecticut’s full, this water
was coming down from up above, and in a matter of an hour it went up probably
eight to ten feet," said Peter Melnik, whose farm is completely flooded.

To the southwest in Chester, Massachusetts, the Walker Island
campground was wiped out.

Rushing waters from a dam release upstream in Becket crumbled the
road that used to lead the campground, leaving a ragged cliff in its wake,
while lifting RV’s and campers off their campsites and tossing them downstream
like a child’s toys.

“They call it Walker
Brook, normally it’s a stream that is about ten feet wide, very calm, a little
bit of fish in it, a little bit of brook trout and people use it for
recreation, but it’s a raging torrent now,” said John Baldasaro, Chester Police Officer.

And in downtown Chester, that same brook swelled over its banks,
flooding into homes, crashing over bridges, and causing a mandatory evacuation
of several streets including route 20.

“Main Street bridge
here it’s almost going over the Main Street bridge and I‘ve lived here 43 years
and I never seen nothing like this," said Chester, MA homeowner Jan Sakaske.